To the uninformed observer at the fighter competition, it would have been difficult to believe that the German Luftstreitkräfte was waging a final, bloody rearguard action in eastern France. Following the daily tests of new aeroplanes at Adlershof, Göring and Udet joined a gallery of Germany’s top fighter pilots at elegant dinners in the best hotels in Berlin. On one evening, Göring and the other élite airmen were hosted in fine style by Anthony Fokker and his staff at the Bristol Hotel,³⁸ and on another evening, Ernst and Alfred Eversbusch, founders of the Pfalz Flugzeug-Werke [aeroplane works], invited the group to dine at the luxurious Adlon Hotel.³⁹ Not content with offering only fine dining, the Eversbusch brothers also arranged for a famous exotic dancer to appear after dinner. Noted World War I German aviation expert Peter M. Grosz related the event, as he heard it during a visit with Alfred Eversbusch in the early 1960s:

‘… Tony Fokker had a real knack for entertaining the visiting frontline pilots when they came to Berlin … [His] method of entertaining, mixing demi-monde damsels with flowing wine and the best culinary delicacies the Bristol Hotel could offer, was well known to his competitors, if not envied. After all, Fokker was no older than the pilots and he understood their needs. Herr Eversbusch reasoned that, to counter Fokker’s persuasive largesse, an event of equal magnitude and excitement was required, something so extraordinary that it would make a lasting impression.

‘During a board meeting at the Pfalz Works … it was decided to go all out. Herr Eversbusch would approach the most famous … contemporary dancer, Fräulein Lucy Kieselhausen, and inquire [whether] she would dance “totally in the nude” for a group of deserving fighter pilots, bemedalled, battle-weary, heroic and in need of some diversion … After discussing the offer with her mother, she told Herr Eversbusch: “I’ll do it for 10,000 gold, not paper, Marks and under the condition there is no applause and my mother is allowed to chaperone in the wings.” Herr Eversbusch [agreed and] … was delighted over his coup. But I could see that he still felt the loss of hard, gold coin-of-the-realm, judging by the sigh followed by a solid gulp of wine.’⁴⁰

Fading Glory in France

While Hermann Göring and other air leaders enjoyed themselves in Berlin, their pilots continued to drive up their unit and personal victory scores. The Geschwader was being pressed hard by the relentless American offensive ‘with its enormous masses of men, artillery [and], tanks …’⁴¹ In response, during the first week of November, JG I fought high in the skies over the battlefield and close to the ground, accompanying low-level Schlachtstaffeln [ground attack units] in their attempt to halt the overwhelming tide of Allied troops.⁴²

But it was all for naught. Jagdgeschwader I’s last day of battle was Wednesday, 6 November 1918. Still operating from Marville, a prominent ace, Leutnant Ulrich Neckel, and two lower-scoring pilots shot down an American Spad S.XIII apiece near Woevre Wood.⁴³ Any sense of triumph did not last, however, as the Geschwader withdrew further east the next day, to Tellancourt.

On Saturday, 9 November, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and went into exile in the Netherlands, thereby ending the German empire. Also on that day, the recently-returned Oberleutnant Hermann Göring received some good news: Jasta 6 pilot Ulrich Neckel, with thirty victories to his credit, had been awarded the Pour le Mérite a day earlier.⁴⁴ The twenty-year-old ace was the Geschwader’s last pilot to receive the honour.

Next, Göring organised JG I's withdrawal to Germany. Several hundred men and the Geschwader’s engines, spare parts, provisions and other necessary equipment were to be loaded into forty-six lorries for the final journey back to Germany. The following day, wearying and confusing orders and counter-orders came in, directing and redirecting the units.

Göring was informed that the Armistice would take effect at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, 11 November 1918. That morning, however, the airfield was covered with fog and Göring worried that, if the fog persisted, he and his men would not be allowed to fly the aeroplanes back to Germany – and be forced to leave them in France. Finally, at 10:00 a.m., the fog lifted and the aeroplanes took off for Darmstadt,⁴⁵ where they would wait for the lorries to catch up with them.

On the flight to Darmstadt, however, one Staffel inadvertently landed in Mannheim. Unbeknownst to them, that city had fallen under the influence of the uprising in Kiel, which on 29 October 1918 saw soldiers mutiny against continuing the war by rising up against their officers. The JG I pilots were quickly overpowered by the renegades, who seized their personal side-arms and aircraft and then released them.

But they had not reckoned with Hermann Göring’s towering rage. When his humiliated men arrived in Darmstadt and recounted their misfortune, the Geschwader-Kommandeur roared at them and all of his other men: ‘I will make those thugs pay for that [insult]. Load your machine guns.’⁴⁶ Then, exercising the type of ruthless authority for which he would become notorious some fifteen years hence, he led the Geschwader to Mannheim, where the other aeroplanes had landed previously and he presented this ultimatum: ‘If the officers are not allowed to take off immediately, with their [machine guns], the airfield will be razed to the ground.’⁴⁷ Something in Göring’s bearing made it clear to his new German adversaries that his threat was deadly serious. In short order, the briefly-interned warplanes were released to Göring’s men.

That evening, Göring prepared his final daily report for JG I’s war diary, with no mention of the incident at Mannheim: ‘11 November. Armistice. Geschwader flight in unfavourable weather conditions to Darmstadt. Misty …’.⁴⁸

Geschwader pilots performed a final act of defiance against the Allied victors. After they had returned to Darmstadt, a general staff officer ordered Göring to have his men fly the aeroplanes to Strasbourg and surrender them to the French authorities. Göring said he could not carry out such an order. On their own, however, his pilots made things easier for him: during a subsequent flight, most of them had “accidents” while landing back at Darmstadt and wrecked many aeroplanes; their machine guns were “somehow” sabotaged, as well. The surviving aircraft met with a similar fate at Strasbourg.⁴⁹

Hermann Göring, last wartime commander of Jagdgeschwader Freiherr von Richthofen Nr I, led his men and what was left of their provisions and equipment from Darmstadt to the Buntpapierfabrik AG [coloured paper manufactory] in Aschaffenburg for demobilisation. The factory building became a barracks for the enlisted men, while the officers were honoured guests of the factory's director, commercial privy councillor Wilhelm Schmitt-Prym.⁵⁰

On the evening of Tuesday, 19 November, Göring convened the Geschwader’s fifty-three officers and 473 non-commissioned officers and other ranks⁵¹ for a final meeting. Gathered in the Stiftskeller [monastery wine cellar] in the historic city along the Main river, these men, like the contents of the casks on the walls, had been distilled to their essence, and Göring would not let them go to their homes throughout Germany without offering his heartfelt thanks and whatever inspirational words he could muster. He reminded them that JG I had accounted for 644 British, French and American aircraft at a cost of fifty-six of their own officer and enlisted pilots and six ground-crewmen killed – and another fifty-two officers and pilots and seven enlisted men wounded.⁵² He told them that theirs was a record to be envied and the stuff of legend and did his best to give them hope in an uncertain future.

As for Hermann Göring, he would face years of disappointment and personal failure. But he kept going, bolstered by an innate toughness and, when needed, an ability to detach himself from reality. The latter was evidenced a short time after the war ended, when the father of his Austrian fiancée, Marianne Mauser, wrote and asked, ‘What have you now to offer my daughter?’ Not to be trifled with, Göring steeled himself against the disappointment he sensed coming and replied: ‘Nothing’.⁵³ With that, the lovely Marianne was consigned to his past.

The Call of a Dark Future

Göring’s future was best presaged by remarks he made after he returned to his beloved Berlin in December 1918. At a meeting of a new officers’ association, held in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, he rose, resplendent in his dress uniform with the Pour le Mérite and other medals, and responded to a speaker who counselled moderation of Germany’s post-war military influence by saying:

‘For four long years, we officers did our duty on the ground, at sea and in the air, and risked our lives for our Fatherland. Now we come home and what do some people do to us? They spit on us and want to take our honour away from us. And I will tell you this: the real [German] people are not responsible for this [conduct]. Each and every one of them was a comrade, irrespective of social standing, for four long, difficult years of war. It is not the real people who are to blame; rather, it is the ones who incited them, who stabbed our glorious army in the back and who wanted nothing more than to enrich themselves at the expense of the real people. And for that reason I urge everyone here today to [nurture] the deepest and most abiding hatred against these criminals [who are] against the German people. The day will come – that I know and I ask that you believe it – when these gentlemen are finished and driven out of our Germany. Prepare yourselves, arm yourselves and work toward that day …’⁵⁴

In those dark times for Germany, Hermann Göring began a whole new cycle of his usual fantasy, bundled in paranoia, lies and boundless ambition. World War I was over – but the armistice gave rise to a false sense of peace that was only the end of the beginning of another world disaster, one in which Göring would rise to become a major figure.